Changing Cultural Tastes Writers and the Popular in Modern Germany [Hardcover]

Changing Cultural Tastesoffers a critical survey of the taste wars fought over the past two centuries between the intellectual establishment and the common people in Germany. It charts the uneasy relationship of high and popular culture in Germany in the modern era. The impact of National Socialism and the strong influence from Great Britain and the United States are assessed in this cultural history of a changing nation and society. The period 1920-1980 is given special prominence, and the work of significant writers and artists such as Josef von Sternberg and Bertolt Brecht, Elfriede Jelinek and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Erwin Piscator and Heinrich B?ll, is closely analysed. Their work has reflected changing tastes and, crucially, helped to make taste more pluralistic and democratic.

Foreword
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Between Volk, Kitsch and Pop: A Question of Vocabulary
The Fatal Ambivalence of Volk
Defining Tastes
Looking Down on the Street
Expressing Free Time
Filling Cultural and Linguistic Vacuums
Conclusion

Chapter 2. Changing Values: The Intelligentsia, Kultur and The People
Church Roots
Till Eulenspiegel An Early Modern Bestseller
New Channels of Public Information
The Origins of a New Science
A Science of the Nation
Decontaminating the Science of a People
Conclusion

Chapter 3. The Weimar Republic and the Revolt against Good Taste and the Great Tradition
Turning against Tradition
The Opera of the Street Die Dreigroschenoper
Optical Words  Piscators Global Theatre
The Fatal Attractions of Low Culture Der Blaue Engel
Popular Culture as a Panacea Der Steppenwolf
Conclusion

Chapter 4. Democratic Compassion for Der kleine Mann
A Culture about Ordinary People
The Challenge to the German Novelist between 1919 and 1979
Petit Bourgeois PolÃ#